Burundi runs on cash. Not mostly, not usually — almost entirely. Away from a handful of international hotels, your card is a piece of plastic with no function, and the habits you have built in Europe or America will not help you here. This is the single most practical thing to understand before you arrive.
The currency is the Burundian franc, written FBu locally and BIF on exchange boards. It has been the country's money since 1964, when it replaced the shared franc of Rwanda and Burundi after independence.
The notes you will actually handle
Notes in circulation run from 100 francs up to 10,000. In practice you will live on the 5,000 and 10,000 notes — years of inflation have left the small denominations with very little purchasing power, and a restaurant bill paid in 500s is a lot of counting for everybody.
When you change money, ask for large notes. Then expect to carry a thicker wad than you are used to: a normal day out involves a brick of paper that would be alarming at home and is completely ordinary here.
Cards, cash machines and the honest answer
Card payment works at the big Bujumbura hotels and a few places oriented to foreign business. Everywhere else — markets, restaurants on the lake, taxis, guesthouses, museums, the man with the fuel — it is cash.
Cash machines exist in Bujumbura but should never be your plan. They are limited to the city, they run out, and foreign cards are not reliably accepted. Arrive with enough money to cover your stay, change it as you go, and treat any working cash machine as a bonus rather than a system.
Bring dollars, and bring them pristine
US dollars are the useful foreign currency here — far more so than euros — and larger hotels and businesses will take them directly. For everything else, you change them.
The important part, and the one that catches people out: the physical condition of the note matters enormously. Bills that are torn, taped, scribbled on, heavily creased or simply old can be refused outright, by banks and by shopkeepers alike. Older-series dollars are often rejected too.
So bring clean, flat, recent notes, in large denominations, and keep them that way — a rigid wallet or an envelope in the bottom of your bag rather than folded into a pocket. This is not fussiness on the part of merchants; a note they cannot pass on is a loss they personally absorb.
The same care applies to the francs you receive. Check what you are handed before you walk away, and politely hand back anything badly damaged.
Changing money
Change at banks and licensed bureaux de change in Bujumbura, or through your hotel. Rates vary by a few per cent and are worth comparing if you are changing a large sum; what is not worth doing is accepting a remarkable rate from somebody in the street, for all the obvious reasons.
Count what you are given, on the spot, before you leave the counter. Nobody will take offence — everyone does it.
What things cost
Burundi is inexpensive by European standards, and the gap between local prices and visitor prices can be wide. A plate of grilled fish and a beer by the lake costs a fraction of what the same thing would at home; a room in a good Bujumbura hotel is priced internationally. Carry small change for taxis, tips and the markets, where rounding up is normal and appreciated.
One habit worth adopting on arrival: break large notes whenever a bigger business gives you the chance, so you are not trying to pay for a two-thousand-franc ride with a ten-thousand-franc note.
In short
Bring more cash than you think, in clean large-denomination dollars. Change it as you go, keep it dry and flat, count it when you take it, and assume every transaction is cash until somebody tells you otherwise. Get that right and the money side of Burundi is genuinely simple.